Kindred

  “And that’s funny?” I’m not smiling anymore. Actually, I’m kind of pissed that he finds this at all humorous.

  “Baby, you know it takes more than that to kill one of us,” he says, softening his expression to comfort me. “But you’re right; I shouldn’t talk about it that way with you. I know it hurts you.”

  “Yes. It does,” I say matter-of-factly.

  A woman and her small son walk past and sit at the booth behind us. Shortly after, two more families fill the empty tables nearby. The faint chatter of voices I’m used to hearing gradually becomes more evident as more and more conversations rise up all around us. I find myself lowering my own voice as if my simple everyday conversation with Isaac—though really it’s not that simple and everyday—will give his secret away. I do that a lot when out with him anywhere. It never matters where. It doesn’t seem to make any difference that Isaac looks perfectly human and that only I know him for what he truly is. I will always look over my shoulder, mind carefully what I say in public and sometimes even sweat a little when someone gets too close, as if they’ll be able to detect the faintest difference in him.

  It’s absurd, but it comes with the territory, like being the keeper of a dark secret and you’re paranoid everyone around you knows you know more than you’re telling.

  “So why’d you change the subject?” Isaac says, catching me off-guard. “You’re not getting away with it that easily.”

  “Get away with what?” I really did forget what we had been talking about before.

  “That independent wall,” he reminds me.

  “Fine, you win,” I say, looking across at him. “But only under one condition.”

  His lips tug into a surprised, subtle grin. “Oh really?” he says, reaching across the table and enclosing both of my hands underneath his own. He pulls my hands up and brushes his lips across the tops of my fingers. “You know, I’ve never done well with conditions. They make me feel all…restricted.” He kisses the fingers on the other hand and I melt further into the seat.

  But I have to pull my hands away before I fall completely under his spell and so I move back against the seat again, playfully pushing him away, though the tips of my fingers graze his for longer than they should.

  “Will you stop that?” I can’t help but smile. “Manipulation is a villainous trait, you know.”

  Isaac chokes back a small laugh and his blue eyes grow a little wider.

  “The condition,” I begin in my most authoritarian tone, “is that you can’t buy something just because I happen to mention that I like it.”

  He crosses his muscular arms in front of him and just looks at me. I wait a few seconds longer for his objection, but apparently, I still have the floor.

  “When we go somewhere,” I continue, “it’s like I’m tip-toeing around everything I say—I didn’t really want the leather purse that much.”

  “Yes you did.”

  I blink, stunned.

  “No I didn’t.”

  “Yes, actually you did,” he repeats. “Your words were: ‘I frickin’ love this purse, Zia—look at the little skulls on the inside.’”

  It’s funny, but stings a bit, how he called me out, but I pretend not to be fazed. “I was talking to Zia,” I say, now crossing my arms to mimic him. “It’s what girls do; we fall in love with pointless stuff all the time, but in reality we only love it as long as it’s new. I was totally over it after the first day I carried it to school.”

  That isn’t entirely the truth, but when he looks at me that way, with that trademark sexy, confident smile, I tend to babble a lot.

  “Fine,” he says, uncrossing his arms, “I won’t buy you anymore purses.” He rolls the peppermint package between his fingers and places it on the plate. Even that insignificant movement seems calculated, as if he’s only pretending to be giving me my way.

  “No,” I lean up fully and reach across the table, taking the front of his shirt into my fist. “Not just purses, Isaac. Otherwise, I’ll start saying how much I frickin’ love stuff from Tiffany’s and Louis Vuitton.” I pull him toward me by his shirt and press my lips against his, tasting the peppermint without having his tongue in my mouth.

  We break the kiss at the same time, pulling away from each other barely two inches, his shirt still wedged in my fingertips.

  “Adorable,” he says and a little girlish grin spreads across my face, though I’m not sure if he’s being affectionate, or mischievous. Isaac is good at that; unreadable when he wants to mess with my head because he knows it makes me crazy.

  I don’t have time to figure it out as the waiter interrupts the moment, approaching gradually and then placing Isaac’s drink and the check on the table. He takes our finished plates away.

  He forgot the to-go box, but I don’t say anything.

  “Thank you,” Isaac nods, moving his hand over the check before I can see the total and annoy him with my futile objections about him paying for it.

  The waiter nods and strolls away, leaving us alone again.

  Pulling out his wallet, Isaac fingers through his bills and chooses a ten for the tip, placing it near the half-full bread basket.

  He takes a quick drink and stands first, offering his hand to me. “Ready to go see Seth off?” he says and I slip my hand into his, maneuvering myself out of the booth.

  The moment I stand I feel hot blood rush up the back of my neck and into my head. Furious black spots spin around in front of my eyes like thousands of mosquitos, causing me to squint and become disoriented. Catching my breath is more urgent than an answer, so I keep my eyes on the table hoping Isaac won’t notice.

  “Adria,” he holds tightly onto my waist, his strong fingers pressing into my ribs tenderly. “Sit back down,” he says, guiding me back toward the booth seat, but I refuse.

  “No, I’m fine,” I say, searching my mind for the most logical explanation. “It’ll pass—damn flu, I know I’m getting it. And right before summer break, too.” I clench a fist at my side, totally mad about the timing.

  The palm of Isaac’s hand covers my forehead, testing the level of heat coming from it—though I don’t feel at all feverish—and then both of his hands cup my cheeks. He stares into my eyes. “Are you sure?” he urges me. “You can go home or to my house and take a nap instead.”

  From the corner of my eye, I notice the couple sitting to the left of us has been listening. The woman looks away when she notices my gaze on her.

  “I’ll be alright,” I say, looking at Isaac again, my face still resting in his hands. “We’ll go see Seth and then it’ll be a long, hot bath and bed at home for me.”

  Isaac barely smiles, almost as if he doesn’t believe a word I said about being fine to go on with our plans.

  6

  SETH, THIRD OLDEST OF Isaac and his brothers, is leaving for Serbia tonight and they’re throwing a big party for him at the Mayfair house. It was supposed to be Nathan, the oldest and next in line to inherit Trajan’s throne, but Nathan decided sometime after that fateful night at the Vargas house that he will stay in the States and rule here.

  I’m convinced this was all Isaac’s doing.

  Nathan wanted Isaac to rule here. He was more than ready to give up his ‘Ascendency’, as they call it, to Isaac not only so that Nathan could go back to Serbia with his father, but because Nathan wanted Isaac to be Alpha here.

  But something changed in Isaac after he rescued me from certain death at the hands of Viktor Vargas. He’s been different. Not to me—except that he’s become even more protective than before—but to everyone else around him. His priorities have changed and from what I gather from conversations Isaac seems to leave me out of, his loyalty has shifted:

  “I’m unfit to lead here, Nathan,” I overheard him say just last week. “When I made the decision to do it, it changed everything. And I don’t regret it.”

  I had been downstairs in Isaac’s kitchen with Zia and we were about to leave for Finch’s Grocery, but I left my purse upstairs in
Isaac’s room and had run back up to get it.

  When I heard them talking inside the room, I forced myself to listen at the door.

  “I get it, man,” Nathan said, “but this is your pack, little brother, not mine and not Seth’s. It was meant for you.”

  Silence ensued for a brief few seconds, which made me nervous they might know I was right outside the door.

  “I can’t do it,” Isaac said. “To try and take on both, I would be failing both and you know it. Our father is barely capable of doing it himself and his years and experience far outweighs mine. I can’t do it.”

  Take on both of what? I thought.

  I wanted to push myself closer against the cracked door even though I could hear them just fine, but I was too afraid to make the slightest bit of movement, worried I’d give myself away.

  I heard one of them sigh heavily and assumed it was Nathan.

  “Then like I said before, I stay here too,” Nathan said with heavy abandon in his voice. “If you give up your Ascendency to Seth, you know that Father will denounce your Lineage.”

  “I don’t care,” Isaac said coldly, as if he truly meant it, though the repercussion still wounded him. “An Alpha protects his own.”

  My palms were sweating and I had stopped breathing at some point, just to make sure I didn’t miss anything under the sound of my breath. But at those last words, the breath caught in the back of my throat just as I had thought it safe to let go. I swallowed hard. An Alpha protects his own. Trajan had said that once, the night I met him and Aramei in the cave. A hundred things went through my mind then, but the one I plucked out of the disarray, the one my rational mind chose to believe was the obvious: Isaac’s first and most important responsibility is to me. Alpha or not, Isaac’s loyalties are to me and while it makes me feel like the most important girl in the world, it also doesn’t feel right.

  Why do I want to be the reason that Isaac loses anything? I’m not well-schooled in the werewolf history and how their principles, beliefs and customs work, but I know enough to know that Isaac is giving up everything for me.

  I don’t like it, that he feels such a responsibility to me. I don’t like it that I feel like a responsibility at all.

  After that day, after I had snuck quietly away from the bedroom door, I tried to talk to Isaac about it on many different occasions. I never let on that I had been eavesdropping so it was difficult to fish for answers about things I wasn’t supposed to know.

  But I never got much in the way of answers not coated by simple, unconvincing half-truths.

  “I’m taking you home as soon as it’s over,” Isaac says, looking over at me in the front seat of his car. We pull into the driveway and he kills the engine.

  “Fine by me,” I agree and go to open the car door. I don’t feel any better this time after the lightheaded spell. Instead, it seems to linger, just enough for me to know it’s there, but not enough to make me want to sit down and gather myself.

  Isaac comes around to my side of the car quickly and takes my hand.

  The Mayfair house is crowded, more so than I have ever seen and that’s saying a lot. I don’t know half of the people all standing around gawking at us as we make our way past the kitchen and into the den. They don’t gawk anymore because I’m with Isaac. They do it because I’m human.

  I wonder if Harry and I are the only humans. He stands off to the side near the staircase with Daisy in front of him, encircled in his arms. I’m surprised at how well Harry takes to all of this, how easily he accepts it. He and I hardly ever talk about it anymore, about his girlfriend and my boyfriend being werewolves (we talk about them all the time, just not in that way). Sometimes I wonder if he has a better handle on everything than I do. That he somehow fits into this secret world naturally, and I’m still a newbie working my way through the amateur stage.

  I feel like an outsider around everyone but Isaac and the few friends in our little group.

  The house smells richly of food: pot roast, buttered dinner rolls and maybe even some kind of pie. All I know for sure is that it isn’t helping the creeping sickness, which I react to instantly once the scent reaches my nostrils. I feel my throat retch a little, but I let out a deep breath and help myself farther away from the kitchen entrance. Isaac is beside me all the way and I notice as we approach the couch, those who had been sitting on it, as usual, move at once. I never look up from staring down at the floor. Honestly, I’m sure I’ll either puke, or pass out if I look at anything higher than my waist.

  Slowly, I lean into the softness of the couch. The back of my neck I feel is moist with a gross, prickling sweat, the kind I remember feeling right before I puked in school last year after getting food poisoning.

  This is bad.

  I don’t remember feeling like this with the flu. At first, when the symptoms were only mild, yes it felt similar. But now, I’m not so sure. The symptoms aren’t going away. They’re getting worse and multiplying, quickly.

  But I suck it up.

  So many voices carry on all around me, mostly talking about Seth and his Ascendancy. Odd, sophisticated conversations about thrones and lineage and a host of other things to which I can never offer input.

  Yeah, I definitely feel like an outsider. And despite Harry being here too, I still feel like the only human.

  But then Genna Bishop, who I only know from Mrs. Schvolsky’s Geometry glass, comes strolling down the stairs and I only have time to wonder why she is here. Other than Harry and me, there has never been anyone else from school hanging out here.

  And I sort of hate Genna Bishop because she is so beautiful that, as one of Nature’s laws, it’s impossible not to hate her. Jet-black hair that flows like silk down the middle of her back. Soft, creamy skin that would be tragic if ever tanned. Green eyes so radiant that I swear she must wear contacts because eyes can never be that striking naturally. Even the way she moves, every subtle gesture of the hands, the way she tilts her head to one side when she smiles, is graceful and fascinating. Genna is a kind and quiet girl and has never come off as spoiled or conceited or shallow, but I hate her in that secret, envious way.

  She steps down off the last step, her gentle fingers sliding away from the wooden banister. Maybe it’s just me, or maybe it’s because she arrived earlier and everyone else has already had their fill of gawking, but I notice I’m the only one staring as she makes her way through the room. Figures appear to move to let her by in areas where there is little space, but no one really looks at her. They go on with their conversations as though she’s any other ordinary girl and isn’t more beautiful than everyone in the room combined.

  She’s coming toward me.

  Instantly, I feel like camouflaging myself into the couch. Not only do I feel disgusting because of the impending illness sure to ruin my Portland trip, but suddenly not even one of my favorite shirts and best pair of jeans seems adequate.

  Secretly, I glance over at Isaac sitting next to me, just to see if he feels as compelled to look at her as I do, but he doesn’t seem to notice her at all, at least not until she steps up to us. But it isn’t enough to warrant his attention. He goes back to talking with Nathan who sits on the couch arm on the other side of him.

  “Hi,” she says, smiling as she stands over me, “I’m Genna. From Mrs. Schvolsky’s class?”

  Really? Did she actually think I wouldn’t remember her?

  I smile back at her, but I’m not about to stand up and risk vertigo or vomiting. “Yeah, I recognize you. How are you?” I really like her, despite not knowing her and setting that whole hate thing aside. I would never treat her badly.

  “I’m good,” she says.

  Awkward silence.

  “Ummm, want to sit down?” I say, patting the cushion to my left. “Kind of packed in here.”

  Her face seems to light up a little more.

  Isaac and Nathan look over at me warily, but I ignore them.

  “Yeah I guess it is,” Genna says as she sits down next to me. “Thank
s.” I feel her hand touch my shoulder, but I really think nothing of it.

  Maybe Genna just feels like an outsider as much as I do. I admit, even with Isaac next to me, it’s hard not to feel like dinner.

  She sits with her back straight and proper, one leg crossed over the other and her pretty powder hands folded loosely on her knee.

  And then it occurs to me: Is she really human? I have to know and soon, because how can I have a conversation with her otherwise? Too many factors have to be taken into consideration: If she’s human, but doesn’t know what everyone else is, I have to choose my words wisely. If she does know, then it’ll be awesome to be able to talk about it. And if she isn’t human…well, there will be a lot questions for Isaac about why I wasn’t told about her sooner.

  I shift uncomfortably on the couch.

  I can hear Nathan and Isaac talking to the right of me about how they think Seth is strong enough to lead his own pack in Serbia. I see Damien and Dwarf, Zia’s brothers, standing at the den entrance hand-in-hand with new girlfriends—new girlfriends every month with those two, it seems—but can’t make out what they’re saying over the chorus of voices between them and me. Somewhere to my left near the hallway, I feel Rachel’s uncouth comments coat my skin like something foul and hard to wash away. Of course, she thinks my presence here is ‘inappropriate’, but that’s not a huge surprise.

  Ah yes, Rachel. Seven months wasn’t enough time for her to get used to me. In fact, it’s been just enough time to cause her to hate me more than ever. But I’ve learned to ignore her for the most part. She can—and does—talk about me every time she sees me, but as long as her hatred never goes further than immature comments, then I can live with that. Literally.

  I force a small smile and turn back to Genna beside me, pushing Rachel’s words out of my ears.

  “It’s okay,” Genna says in a low whisper, “I’m like you—not so much them, except that I do love a good steak every once in a while.”

  It’s as if she’s been digging around inside my head. Either that or the worries are etched all over my face and totally obvious. I’m pretty sure it’s the latter.